As to the crit thing, yes crit is more favourable for Monks due to how it interacts with Mana Tea (this is getting nerfed in 5.4, guaranteed) but overall crit and intellect are equal in throughput. Crit normally raises the base HPS of all your 'normal' skills by 2-5%~ but it cuts your healing CD abilities by 10-20%. Taking Monks as an example you can expect (from switching 10x 160 int gems to 10x 320 crit gems) a 1k~ hps boost Uplift, Renewing Mists, Soothing Mists, but the price you pay is that Life Cocoon is a lot less powerful and the same with Revival. I can only imagine the same thing occurs for Paladins with their Light's Hammer, Holy Radiance et al.

Its not the same. You pick between 10x160 int gems or 10x320 crit gems, both of which are output gems.On progress we more or less have to go 10x320 spirit gems(to follow your example) which isn't an hps boost to either LH/Radiance at all, its just needed.Our stats in reforge flux are just Mastery,Haste and Crit not Mastery,Haste,Crit,Spirit.

As a developer, he came forth during the last Blizzcon and said cookie cutter specs are over with, you can now go spec what you like between the talents you have. And that's pretty much a lie isn't it?

I have a very nice TMW icon for Sacred Shield, and my LoD "Q" bind is ready, but I would also prefer to be in a progress raid in 5.4 . And this flurry of nerfs worries me greatly.

I feel he should be more interested into why w_w_w.wowhead.c_om/talent#l!Mh|TbfkcR is completely crap instead of being upset w_w_w.wowhead.c_om/talent#lTU| is used by 90% of Holy Palas.

I think, and this is drastic, that EF should be made baseline for Holy (replacing Word of Glory) and there should be another talent in it's place. I guess that would require another expansion though. XD

I think, and this is drastic, that EF should be made baseline for Holy (replacing Word of Glory) and there should be another talent in it's place. I guess that would require another expansion though. XD

I can agree with this (with Eternal Flame being Holy only, and Prot/Ret still having the regular Word of Glory). Personally as a compromise I'd go with a slightly watered down version (15% beacon transfer over 50%) baseline, with another single-target oriented talent replacing it.

However Selfless Healer however crap for Holy is pretty good for Prot/Ret. So maybe instead, we should just accept that not all talents will always be viable for all specs? Of course ideally we want this, but realistically I don't see it happening.

Heres some of the things I think they should do to "fix" holy paladins:1. Remove EF
They would obviously add another talent and that talent should be as good as SS and not EF.2. Buff LoD by 20%
To make it heal slightly less than current EF does, it might need to be buffed more or less, I dont know the exact number.3. Increase LoD range to 40 yards
One might argue this would make it "faceroll" but right now we have nothing to see if we are in range or out of range of people with LoD. One boss that comes to mind is Iron Qon heroic, if you try to LoD the melee theres a great chance that you will fail and it will do almost no healing at all. Could also just keep the 30 yards or make it even less but let it be castable on players instead like HR.4. Tune WoG so it does 10% more healing than LoD asuming none of them does overhealing
This is to encourage tank healing or healing people who are low on hp, too many paladins cheese with EF and too many paladins will cheese with LoD if WoG doesnt do more healing.5. Make Selfless healer proc off crusader strike instead of judgement for holy paladins
Obviously to make selfless healer worth taking for holy paladins.6. Make holy paladin melee attacks and swings 40 yards range
So why turn holy paladins into melee machines? Because atm it almost seems like we are balanced arround being in melee atleast for some duration of any given fight. Personally I really hate having to dancing arround like a maniac on Dark Animus heroic or having to run from one add to another on primordius. I feel like I spend too much of my energy trying to be in melee, yes it always works out and I do more healing because of it but it is so damn annoying. If we compare shamans with paladins all they have to do is stand still and spam lightning bolt, but of couse theirs regenerate less mana. 7. Nerf Seal of Insight by 50% (or whatever the number needs to be to make it balanced)
To bring it in line with a shaman spamming lightning bolt.8. Have HS cd scale with haste
This is obviously to make haste more attractive for holy paladins, if we stacked some haste we would also be doing less mastery healing.

6. Make holy paladin melee attacks and swings 40 yards range
So why turn holy paladins into melee machines? Because atm it almost seems like we are balanced arround being in melee atleast for some duration of any given fight. Personally I really hate having to dancing arround like a maniac on Dark Animus heroic or having to run from one add to another on primordius. I feel like I spend too much of my energy trying to be in melee, yes it always works out and I do more healing because of it but it is so damn annoying. If we compare shamans with paladins all they have to do is stand still and spam lightning bolt, but of couse theirs regenerate less mana.

No.... just no.

Originally Posted by Pacer

8. Have HS cd scale with haste
This is obviously to make haste more attractive for holy paladins, if we stacked some haste we would also be doing less mastery healing.

Three letter word comes in here, "pvp"

[edit]

I guess with the danger of coming off as too dismissive Pacer (because this isn't just aimed at you) my main response would be that there's no need to fix that which isn't broken.

voidspark how could you possibly call it a "row of shit" when SS does 5% of a persons healing, that is not a shit talent. It just so happens that EF does more than those 5% you could get from SS.

I dont agree with you that paladins are not broken. Both seal of insight and EF are completely and utterly broken. We almost seem to be balanced arround some use of seal of insight but at the same time we are not considered a "melee healer" like monks. If we stand in melee for seal of insight we wipe the raid on most heroic boss fights. I dont think I need to explain myself as to why EF is broken.

A lot of people have also come into the thread claiming that our mastery is broken, while I do not agree that nerfing it is the way to go I think changing it to something that is not shield related should work just fine. Although it would have to be some boring +healing stuff or a hot to make it as powerful as it currently is under heavy aoe situations. It wouldnt matter if our mastery became "bad" during low damage phases as long as we are still able to heal when the healing matters.

It was more in response to the other change I would like to see so we could melee the boss from 40 yards range.

Even then, a shaman spamming lightning bolt probably has a better mana return since it is guaranteed on spell hit to return the mana, whereas seal of insight is a chance (even factoring in the cost of the lightning bolt). But the whole 40 yard thing I don't think would be an accepted change.

I just think Paladin's need a little reworking, SS just doesn't have the diversity and usefulness of EF, and removing it or nerfing it reduces our output considerably. Also on the question of mastery, changing it to a HoT or a flat healing increase just makes it a rehash of either a holy priests mastery or part of the disc mastery.

I can agree with this (with Eternal Flame being Holy only, and Prot/Ret still having the regular Word of Glory). Personally as a compromise I'd go with a slightly watered down version (15% beacon transfer over 50%) baseline, with another single-target oriented talent replacing it.

Minimal changes fixing the "problem"

Also mastery is not a "problem" despite people complaining that it "snipes" when overhealing low-damage content. If mastery were really that OP despite nerf, then you would see paladins consistently, indisputably topping every 25 heroic fight but Tortos/Horridon. That's not happening, ergo it's not OP.

1. Just because we have a hot doesn't make us resto druids. EF ticks for less than 10k. Rejuv ticks for huge amounts. EF requires 3HP for that tick. Rejuv is spammable. In a straight hot off the druid wins.
2. Just because we have a shield doesn't make us a disc priest. We have nothing like PW:S and our raid shielding doesn't come close to Spirit Shell.

We can do things that both druids and priests can but we don't do either specific role as well. Perhaps our problem is we're good at pretty much everything while also keeping the tank up. They only thing we don't do well is burst AoE healing when spread.

If they want to make SS more attractive allowing it to be on two targets could go a long way. That might edge it out on fights where both tanks take a lot of damage or dots get thrown out on raid members, leaving EF more popular on fights without these features.

Unfortunately it seems clear they're going down the nerf EF route. I think we can all see that if they start messing with EF they're going to get it wrong. If they bring it down to SS level then no one will bother with EF. Without EF our current playstyle is going to change a lot and I really think a new expansion is the time for that, not the final patch of one.

One option would be to leave EF alone but make mastery not proc off the hot portion. It prevents the raid shielding problem. That alone, however, might be enough to push EF completely out of use.

---------- Post added 2013-04-27 at 10:26 PM ----------

Originally Posted by voidspark

Also mastery is not a "problem" despite people complaining that it "snipes" when overhealing low-damage content. If mastery were really that OP despite nerf, then you would see paladins consistently, indisputably topping every 25 heroic fight but Tortos/Horridon. That's not happening, ergo it's not OP.

I have to agree with this. The more challenging the content the less mastery feels obstructive to other healers. And for the easier content..... drop a healer if the other healers feel they have nothing to heal?

The thing with EF is that either it will be completely useless and never worth using or it will be extremely overpowered like it is atm. I really dont think there is a way for them to balance it, they may aswell delete it and start over with that talent. Sure they could make it baseline but that would not solve it being overpowered unless they also nerf it at the same time.

The thing with EF is that either it will be completely useless and never worth using or it will be extremely overpowered like it is atm. I really dont think there is a way for them to balance it, they may aswell delete it and start over with that talent. Sure they could make it baseline but that would not solve it being overpowered unless they also nerf it at the same time.

The ability itself isn't overpowered, not one single person was complaining about it last tier, probably because monks and disc priests were dominating everyone was paying attention to them. But now with the Tier 14 4 set in its current form and this tiers gear we were able to get mastery up to higher levels. So this with the increased holy power generation allowed us to output a lot with EF. Remove this, it just goes back down to pre-4 set levels in which it was just kind of there, obviously with increased spell power, effective healing is going to increase, but this is a scaling issue, not something wrong with the abilities core.

The ability itself isn't overpowered, not one single person was complaining about it last tier, probably because monks and disc priests were dominating everyone was paying attention to them. But now with the Tier 14 4 set in its current form and this tiers gear we were able to get mastery up to higher levels. So this with the increased holy power generation allowed us to output a lot with EF. Remove this, it just goes back down to pre-4 set levels in which it was just kind of there, obviously with increased spell power, effective healing is going to increase, but this is a scaling issue, not something wrong with the abilities core.

I dont understand what you mean by scaling, LoD and EF use the same resource and the same amount of that resource so when EF is better with T14 its also going to be better without T14. The only difference will be that after the T14 nerf you will see HR doing more healing than it does atm but EF will still be better than LoD.

Right. Realistically, how many EF's will you be able to roll without 4pc, outside of either 1) cooldowns, 2) extremely lucky divine purpose procs, or 3) spending exorbitant amounts of mana?

The main problem is that EF is awkwardly placed. It is next to two single-target healing abilities, but I'd argue it's almost essential at this point for the paladin healing toolkit, hence the reason it should be made baseline for holy. Of course, for prot/ret it is still mainly serving as a single-target (self) heal, and thus there's no need for EF for those two specs.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the ability given logs from previous tiers and the current tier, and making it baseline (holy only) and reducing its tick beacon transfer to 15% (similar to all AoE abilities, including light of dawn) with the intention of replacing its position with another single-target healing talent to compensate sounds to me like the right way to go.

It doesnt matter how many EFs you can roll on people as long as EF>LoD. Eternal Flame would be balanced if it did 500 million healing as long as LoD did more than 500 million healing. A single target heal should never do more healing than an aoe heal.

Due to how MoP tank mechanics work it basicly means tanks have to play correctly or they die. No amount of healing will reliably save any tank mistakes when you are doing content in appropriate gear levels. This combined with the beacon mechanic that penalizes direct healing, blizzard's tendency to stray away from simultanious dual tanking and MoP's limited mana pools which forces healers to maximize total amount of healing a mana pool can provide (without people dying), which for paladins mean you very often end up healing random raid members, which ends up giving them a mastery shield, which you want to maintain in order to maximize effectiveness, which is where eternal flames comes in.

Its a multitude of things that have culminated in this way of healing and no big or small balancing of numbers will change this healing style or how eternal flame fits into this.